Chapter 1: A story of inclusiveness.

How technology, industry, and society should leave no one behind.

This is what me and many people in the accessibility community have been advocating for so long. Steve Saylor.

This is the first chapter of the What if season 1 series.

In this moment of history, content is the perfect vehicle to share powerful and meaningful messages. Stories that make us challenge how we make things and how we think to push us to find new and creative solutions for this uncertain moment in this complex and volatile world. This is the purpose of What if, and this is what the following story will try to do.

It all starts with empathy.

I want you to think about your favorite film, the one that you could keep watching and never get tired of it. Or your favorite music album, the one that cheers you up every time you listen to it. Or even your favorite book, that transports you to that special place that you love.

Now I want you to imagine yourself being unable to have those experiences. 

Imagine you are deaf or blind, and you can’t enjoy music as other people do. Would your personality be different if you never been able to see that film when you were younger?

Experiences shape us as humans, they build our way of seeing the world, they inspire us, motivate us, push us forward. I can′t imagine my life without my first Metallica concert or without watching Jurassic Park at the cinema or Matrix, I can′t imagine my life without the first time I heard a Harley Davidson or the first time I saw my wife.

Would you still have had the same life goals and ambitions? Or would you be a totally different person?

For a UX/UI designer, the answer is pretty simple. They use technology and at the service of people so they will never miss an experience, no matter how they are, where they are or when they want to enjoy it. 

María works as UX/UI lead designer at Naughty Dog for “The Last of Us Part II”, before that she worked at remarkable studios and projects like EPIC Games or the mega-blockbuster The Division at Ubisoft′s Red Storm studio.

But let me tell you that this is just the context, while pretty much everybody is talking about how good, big, and impactful is this game, very few people are talking about the real achievement. TLOU2 is the most accessible game ever.

For those of you who are not familiar with the inclusive design, I will say that this is a bit more complex than putting somebody on a tiny screen speaking sign language to translate a movie.

Let me tell you something about UX/UI designers, these folks are by far the most empathetic and humanized professionals in their industry.

In a product-centric, result-oriented, and ego dominated industry, it′s really hard to find someone who is spending nights and countless personal hours on reading neuroscience books to understand people better, to understand the psychology of the characters to make them enjoyable for everyone.

The business world and the marketing world would now call it customer-centricity.

If you want different results, first be surrounded by different people.

It is too common in the creative industry people to tend to be surrounded by like-minded people. But if you think about being creative it is exactly the opposite. In the case of accessibility, it′s more or less the same, if you want to think differently, if you want to be impactful you first need to start building your team differently from scratch. 

Maria: We worked with accessibility consultants, we worked with people with a range of disabilities blind, impaired vision, hard of hearing, and motor disabilities mixed with UX/UI researchers, and developers. A team of 12 people that I was part of.

I think the key to it is to start from early development to put accessibility at the forefront. We had that mindset and it was easy to move forward all together. Mistakes will happen, but that’s the beauty of starting early, you can react, iterate and polish. 

Matthew Gallant and Em Schatz led the accessibility team, steering the project and keeping us moving forward.

Oliver: I guess that this made you able to see reactions, limitations, and improvements from the very beginning.

M: Absolutely, we implemented more than 60 accessibility features, many of which were novel and new in the industry. Marking a before and after in the industry overall, this afforded me incredible moments where I got the chance to observe and interact with players who were able to play the game fully. When you see the smile of a person who is able to play in a completely new way, with almost no limitations, that makes you really emotional

Common sense is not so common.

You probably will think that this way of doing things is a no-brainer but accessibility, the real one, in the videogame industry is quite new it is now that the disabled gamer community is talking about several games and companies that are finally starting to take it seriously.

Inclusiveness is an interesting concept because it plays symmetrically at many different levels. We′ve seen these days on the street people claiming for equal opportunities of gender, race, religion, we′ve seen incredibly amazing movements putting sexual predators in front of justice. We are now seeing a big social fight from people against racist institutions. Still, a long way to go, still a lot to do.

O: Okay María, let me ask you an uncomfortable question: How is it being a woman, Hispanic, and pushing something that only a few studios in the world are interested in while working in an industry known for not being very open-minded to fight inequalities? 

Maria took a sip of her coffee and took her time to process the question. 

M: We are now in a moment with enough sensibility to notice when something is part of the society or if it′s specific to just a concrete situation of an individual or a company. The American entertainment industry has faced several social revolutions in a few years, women's rights, LGBTQ, the black community…We are progressing but it's far from being fixed. but Tthe good thing is that now people are more aware, and it’s is a global topic.

There are tones of micro situations that show you that women in my industry are far from being in an equal position, I had the opportunity to work with some incredibly talented women, the world is constantly forcing us to be better than the rest, to be smarter than the rest, to always go the extra mile to compensate the lack of attention on our ideas.

The forgotten gamers. 

O: Such a monumental effort to touch everyone’s life, also takes a toll on your own. How do you feel after having shipped the game?

M: I guess that the feeling could be like somebody finishing an iron man race for the first time. You have to prepare for it for months or maybe a year. You put so much of you have to be strict with every aspect of your life because you are putting all in, your time, your energy, your heart, and your soul. into a project like this but when you see it all, there’s something incredible knowing that it enhanced the players’ experience with the story. That feeling is indescribable. And when you see it out there knowing that everything you did was to enhance their experience with the story it is something I can′t describe.

Disabled gamers used to be forgotten, not anymore.

María told me about her nights studying and learning to find a UX/UI concept that completely follows the essence of the story of the game. 

And in the end, she told me one of the best and most humble statements I ever saw from a professional. 

“A good UX/UI design doesn't want to be noticed, its purpose is to make you flow naturally with the story, and to enhance your experience it is embedded into the journey, if you have to pay too much attention to it it's not good.”

María is now taking a well-deserved rest to recover the body, mind, and above all spirit. She looked exhausted and I was also thinking about all the articles written about a dangerous unwritten rule that has been quietly established in the industry — the culture of crunch. 

Perfectionism is a dangerous path, we are all here to give our best but there′s a line that transforms perfectionism into an obsession and that is why in the gaming industry there's a constant blood bath. 

Some voices are raising the issue of making a certain noise but as customers in other industries are starting to be aware of their responsibility of compulsive purchasing, about fast fashion, about plastic, children labor, palm oil, sexual harassment scandals in companies, racist organizations… 

Nothing is coming from society demanding responsible practices and inclusiveness to the gaming industry. In the end, people just want to play games and they don′t care about how many people got burned out with psychological problems like PTSD or how many of them developed sleep disorders or even losing their relationships forced to finish the project if they want to be on the game credits. 

Inclusiveness should work at any level, from any angle at any time. Society should never leave anyone behind, if we would use this mindset all the time we would probably have more justice, more humanity, and more happiness.

No organization, product, or policy should be above the welfare of the people. We still have a lot to do and a long way to go but sometimes we see stories of people like María who gave everything to leave no one behind. I wish it wasn’t so difficult.

In this strange moment, we have to raise these stories to bring about change, or at least question whether it is time to start changing things.

We all have the power to challenge, we all can learn. We have the chance to change things by asking “what if…”